Who wants to go to Europe? New PRIO Policy Brief

News

28
February 2013

What images of Europe lie behind the wish to migrate? And who are the people who prefer to remain in their own country? A new policy brief,Who wants to go to Europe?(PRIO Policy Brief 04/2013) was launched at a breakfast seminar at PRIO today. Written by PRIO research director Jørgen Carling, the policy brief presents the results from a migration survey of 8000 people from 16 different areas within Morocco, Senegal, Turkey and Ukraine. The survey was conducted as a part of the research project 'Imagining Europe from the Outside (EUMAGINE)'.

At the breakfast seminar, Jørgen Carling gave an overview of the four-country survey, while PRIO researcher María Hernández Carretero presented the Senegalese case study.

The policy brief finds that although migration aspirations are more common among men, gender-related differences are generally small. Moreover, the likelihood that individuals will wish to emigrate does not appear to be strongly related to how their own standards of living may be changing. The study also indicates that people with a strongly positive positive perception of Europe are far more likely to have migration aspirations than those with a neutral or negative perception of Europe.

The EUMAGINE project involves more than thirty researchers in seven countries who work to understand how people in Morocco, Senegal, Turkey and Ukraine relate to the possibility of migration. The project specifically explores how perceptions of human rights and democracy affect migration aspirations.